


Garden in Dol Guldur

by esama



Series: Green Lord of Dol Guldur [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Bilbo Baggins, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Post-Battle of Five Armies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 18:06:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6019843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If you wouldn't mind it terribly, I would like to take a small detour south on our way through Mirkwood."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Garden in Dol Guldur

**Author's Note:**

> Proofread by Darlene, many thanks.

"If you wouldn't mind it terribly, I would like to take a small detour south on our way through Mirkwood," Gandalf said. "To Dol Guldur. Now, the Elves of the Woodland Realm have agreed to house you for the duration -"

"I would much rather come with you if that is alright," Bilbo said quickly.

"Dol Guldur is the fortress of darkest sorcery," Gandalf said firmly. "It is no place for a Hobbit."

"Well I spent a month in the halls of the Woodland Realm and it is no place for a Hobbit either, I find," Bilbo answered, shaking his head. He'd gotten the honour of handing over the White Gems of Lasgalen and Thranduil had very imperiously and very pointedly named him Elf friend for it – him and not the Dwarves from whom the gems truly came from. He'd rather not stick his fingers in that pot again. "So I'd much rather go with you, if that is all the same with you."

"Well if you're sure. But watch yourself, Master Baggins," Gandalf warned. "It is a dark and diseased place where nothing grows, and I would hate to see you come to harm."

 

* * *

 

The fortress of Dol Guldur was little more than a ruin now and the orcs had fled it – what few Fell things remained were abandoned warg pups and spiders that were already crawling all over the ruins. And Gandalf was very right in calling the place diseased. It was, Bilbo soon figured out, the source of the sickness that plagued Greenwood the Great.

But Gandalf had also called it a place where nothing grew and Bilbo wasn't so sure of that.

While Gandalf explored the ruins and investigated the remains of those that had lived there, Bilbo walked along the ground, digging his toes into the dry, parched soil. There was life brewing underneath, he could feel it, it pulsed on the soles of his feet and it felt… peculiar and wrong and familiar, all at once. The orcs had grown something in the soil of Dol Guldur – but what? Bilbo was no green toe, but even he could tell the difference between a plant and this, whatever this was.

"What do you mean, what they grew?" Gandalf asked him suspiciously when he enquired about it. "They are orcs and goblins – they can grow nothing."

"I can feel it though," Bilbo said and poked the dry earth with his toes. "Something grows underneath – and it's dying."

Gandalf frowned deeply, watching him and then looking at the earth. "Hmrh… best leave it be and let it die, then. Whatever orcs grow can't be good."

Bilbo scowled after him as the wizard headed off to continue his investigation. Let it die? Let an earthen thing that grew on soil, sickly or not, die? What did Gandalf think he was – a Dwarf?

 

* * *

 

It started small – a bucket of water, thrown on the dry, dead soil, just enough to quench its terrible thirst. Bilbo did it to all of them – for there were many and they were all drying under ground, with the weather deathly still and no one to water them. It took him a whole afternoon of carrying buckets to water them all and after he felt that truly Hobbitish spark of satisfaction over work well done.

But if course it wasn't a work well done, not at all. Though now watered, the soil was still poorly, its nutrients long spent – even grass did not grow in Dol Guldur, and the trees had long since died. There was little left in the ground for the growing things to feed on.

So Bilbo looked around and then, with a shovel fashioned from orcish gauntlet, he found what good soil he could. It came to him in the form if warg dung for the most part, and in the form of spoiling things left on the ground to rot away. With warg puppies nipping playfully at his heels, Bilbo mixed the dung and rot with wood chips and dry leaves and then spent the rest of the day spreading his make-shift fertiliser onto the ground, mixing it in with his fingers and feeling the things underground respond as he watered the soil anew and let the richer stuff seep beneath.

Gandalf found him then and chewing his pipe furiously watched him work. "Nothing good comes from continuing the orcs' work," the wizard warned him darkly.

Bilbo cast him a look and sank his fingers in the ground. "And nothing at all comes from leaving it to die," he said and felt at the life beneath. "I do wonder, though, how they manage with no leaves, nothing to take the light in."

"I suppose they don't need the light," Gandalf mused around his pipe, his voice grim.

"Everything needs light," Bilbo said and frowned at the soil, his hands wrist deep in it. "Nothing can grow right without the proper light to feed them."

 

* * *

 

The next day, a hint of green could be seen in Bilbo's strange garden in Dol Guldur's shadow. It was just one scraggly leaf, dark and small and withered, but under Bilbo's gentle care it grew wide and tentatively turned its face to the sun. While Gandalf stood back and watched darkly, Bilbo coaxed green out of the dead ground and taught it to seek the light.

That day Bilbo found what he could only assume was what the orcs meant to feed the dead ground. It was a thick, viscous draught, dark and rich and sure enough it would have given the growing things all the nutrients they needed. But there was all too much of it – barrels and barrels stacked high in the depths of Dol Guldur.

"Orc grog," Gandalf said with disgust after smelling it. "It's how they manage long marches. Best leave it be, Bilbo."

"You mean to say orcs drink this?" Bilbo asked, horrified.

"By the bucket if they can get it – a flask of it will keep an orc running for days."

Bilbo stared at him and then at the barrels of grog. Except it wasn't grog. It was fertiliser good as any you could find in the Shire. And he wasn't quite sure what to think of the fact that not only did orcs have fertiliser but apparently they drank it themselves.

"It seems that there is a lot I don't know about orcs," Bilbo mused.

Later he mixed a small amount of the grog in water before throwing it on the growing leaves. No point wasting good fertiliser, no matter where it came from and what it was called.

 

* * *

 

They wound up staying in Dol Guldur for far longer than Gandalf had probably meant to. Bilbo tended to his growing garden of green things as light began to carefully shine on the fortress and Gandalf watched over him, increasingly thoughtful and contemplative over the whole thing. Bilbo, for the most part, just ignored him.

Like all Hobbits, he'd taken to talking to his plants, chattering about the Quest and Dwarves and of course of the Shire to the growing stalks and leaves. "You would like it there," he told the leaves. "The earth is better there, not so sickly, much more full of life. Here there aren't even earthworms."

He liked to think they enjoyed his tales. It certainly helped him get over some of his heartbreak, just to talk.

"Plant your trees, watch them grow," Bilbo sighed sadly and shook his head. "I did not plant you, but perhaps it's similar enough to qualify."

Under his ground, life flourished and grew.

 

* * *

 

It had been weeks and Bilbo had gotten used to living in the ruins of Dol Guldur, to minding his garden. Why Gandalf still lingered, he wasn't sure, but the wizard seemed satisfied with just watching him tend to his garden, so that was fine. It was coming along nicely, Bilbo thought and wondered about harvest.

And then the earth moved and Bilbo, who had been in the midst of checking the leaves for insect damage, found himself suddenly without purchase on the ground as it shifted and roiled under him. The leaves parted and the earth broke and suddenly Bilbo found himself sitting in the lap of an… an

An earthen being. Yes, that was the closest thing he could get to finding a proper word for it. Earthen. Thick of muscle and wide of shoulder it – he – reminded Bilbo a little of an orc and yet not at all.

"Well!" Bilbo said after a moment of gob smacked staring. "You came out very fine indeed!" Because what else could you say when a thing you grew turned out big and mighty?

The being grinned at him, toothy and bright. "I rather did, didn't I?" he said in a voice like gravel and made to sit – only to be stopped by the root-like umbilical chord, still attached to the stalk.

"Ah, let's just get this," Bilbo said and cut the chord and tied it before standing up. "Now let me have a look at you."

He was inspecting the naked earthen being still with in mix of great pride and greater confusion, when Gandalf found them. The wizard stared at Bilbo and his six foot tall creation and for a moment said nothing. "Well," he then said and frowned, obviously utterly lost for words.

"I think I'll call him Bandobras," Bilbo decided and Bandobras grinned at him delightedly.

 

* * *

 

By the next morning, the whole harvest was unearthed and Bilbo was the proud… something of not only Bandobras, but of Mungo, Gerontius and Bungo, and Isengrim and Adalgrim who were born of the same stalk and Reginard, Rorimac and finally Ferdibrand who breached the soil the last of all nine. All of them were tall and broad shouldered and earthen and quick to talk and make jokes that had Bilbo's particular brand of sarcasm and dry wit to them.

"Well," Gandalf said, as they rummaged through Dol Guldur for clothes. "You now seem to have nine friendly orcs to mind, Bilbo."

"Are they orcs, though? They act nothing like orcs," Bilbo asked. "I've never seen people so Hobbit-like outside the Shire."

"Well of course they are like Hobbits – a Hobbit grew them and he grew them well indeed, so much so that they are the tallest orcs I have ever seen, and they stand in sunlight as if they were born to it," Gandalf snorted and watched him seriously. "And for that they are loyal and love you and your ways. But they are still orcs, kindly though they may be."

"Hmmm and big folk will not look kindly on them, will they?" Bilbo grumbled, watching his… orcs compare their chosen garb with great, light hearted amusement at each other expense. "I can't take them to the Shire, can I?"

Gandalf just looked at him.

"Well," Bilbo turned and looked at Dol Guldur. As he'd tended to his strange garden, greenery and life had crept into the fortress and withered trees were pushing out new leaves and grass and moss was starting to grow out of cracks in the stonework. "It seems no one has laid claim to this place now and life can yet manage here. Perhaps we'll stay and see what we can do to make this place liveable."

As it was, after growing and harvesting a patch orcs, he was rather curious as to how one went about planting them.

**Author's Note:**

> And so Bilbo grows himself an orc army and they rebuild Dol Guldur and in future they burn swathes of Mirkwood wood to plant healthy new trees (and also vegetables and fruits and other yummy things) and elves come and demand to know who the orcs answer to and with great big grins they say “we serve the Lord of Dol Guldur” and Bilbo facepalms a lot.
> 
> I will never get over Saruman growing orcs like freaking potatoes in LOTR.


End file.
